


hand under my shirt, baby kiss it better

by sindubu



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: F/F, apartment neighbors au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26062171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sindubu/pseuds/sindubu
Summary: Sooyoung wears her lower lip to pieces, lets her teeth tug off dry bits of skin as she listens to Seulgi cry and try to be quiet about it, probably, so she doesn’t disturb any of the other residents. And Sooyoung doesn’t know why, but she misses when the girl didn’t think to consider her apartment neighbors anymore, when she was too busy laughing and loving to notice she was filling the silence of everyone else who wasn’t as lucky.She turns over on her side and tugs her comforter over her body. Seulgi will get used to being alone eventually — Sooyoung’s been alone all these years, after all, she knows best about these things.
Relationships: Kang Seulgi/Park Sooyoung | Joy, side seulrene - Relationship
Comments: 20
Kudos: 92
Collections: #GGFLASHFIC





	hand under my shirt, baby kiss it better

Sooyoung likes love.

Yerim would say different. Yerim would scrunch her face and tell her briefly dating a boy over the summer because she was lonely and her parents unexpectedly dropped by Seoul just to visit doesn’t count, like how flossing before the dentist doesn’t count if you weren’t doing it before the expectation to. But Sooyoung insists. Love is as wonderful as the world makes it out to be, candy sweet and best shared when you’re not supposed to. Love is a little rebellious. Love wakes you up before dawn, wearing a foolish smile, too indulgent to be sorry.

The last part is especially true: the walls are thin in Sooyoung’s apartment — there’s not much to be done about it, and the rent is too cheap to complain. She spits into the sink, cupping her hands with the water rushing from the sink to rinse and wash away the remains of the foam from her toothpaste.

Above her, there are the stirrings of the couple upstairs. Sooyoung’s ears pick up the noise of soft giggling, murmurs spoken too quietly for her to tell words. What’s impossible to miss is the warmth pooled into each syllable, like the morning light coming in from the window has swept in and made work of their words themselves.

Sooyoung bounds down the stairs, two steps at a time, nearly barreling into the ajumma that runs the cafe at the floor level, bending at the waist in apology before sprinting to the station. When she makes it, there’s a stitch she rubs into at her side, but she still makes it on time. Sooyoung plugs her earphones in and begins to thumb at her playlist, forgets all about the girls upstairs who make music with their own laughter every morning.

“My mom’s going to fire you one day,” Hayoung tells her over the counter, pushing a stack of takeout boxes wrapped in plastic in her arms.

“No, she won’t.” Sooyoung is already adjusting her helmet from the last person in charge of deliveries, snatching the keys hanging off the restaurant wall next to the scooter parked outside. “She’s maternal, and I don’t have any family in Seoul.”

Hayoung clucks her tongue. “Not for a lack of trying. Have your parents set you up with someone new yet?”

This is why she shouldn’t tell her friends anything. “Hey, has that unnie come in lately? The one you like? Naeun-ssi?”

She narrowly avoids the rolled up newspaper tossed at her on her way out, but it’s worth it.

(Sooyoung just wants to sleep, but the upstairs couple have yet to replace their box spring. There’s a pause, a stillness in the air that makes her think they’re done, finally, but then she hears a low moan echo through the walls. She glances at her clock and throws a blanket over her head.

A few minutes later, Sooyoung kicks the covers off, sleepily flicking on the lamp light to her desk a few feet away: to study while she’s being kept up, at least.)

It’s like this:

Sooyoung isn’t sure what is, exactly, but it looks a lot like the way Seulgi waits outside in the snow for her girlfriend to come home when she finishes late at work. She studies by the windowsill, rubbing at tired eyes as her mouth splits into a yawn, pausing over the page as she spots the girl wait under the awning of the apartment building with an umbrella over her head to buffet against the flecks of snow that begin to come down faster, swirling powder white onto the deep gray of concrete at her feet.

It must be cold, Sooyoung thinks, watching as Seulgi melts winters with her smile as Joohyun appears around the corner, scarf wrapped around her neck as she hurries to meet her halfway.

Sooyoung doesn’t pick up on it at first.

There are signs, still: the stirring in the back of her mind that something’s off when she realizes she doesn’t get woken up before her alarm for three days in a row, or the mild jolt to her stomach when the weekend rolls around and there is no soft music filtering from upstairs, no quiet pad of socks against kitchen tile dancing in tandem with its usual pair.

Maybe a small part of Sooyoung notices before she really knows, a slant to the axis of her universe that tilts her just a few degrees shy of piecing together just why and how things feel different, even if she’s sure nothing’s changed with her.

Yerim calls her to ask if she’s going to make it to the bus on time, asks what has her so distracted when Sooyoung skids to a halt outside her apartment one morning and sees Joohyun carrying a box into a moving truck and oh.

That’s what’s different.

Sooyoung doesn’t use her earphones much anymore.

The entire building feels quieter, emptier even though the only person that’s left is a five foot two girl and the apartment directly upstairs is still occupied, she knows. Sooyoung has still seen Seulgi come in and out for groceries, for the mail, even if she buys less these days and sometimes stares a little too long at the postage and Sooyoung just knows it’s a letter addressed to the wrong person, to the one that doesn’t live here, not anymore.

Sometimes quiet is good, preferable even. But there are nights where even Sooyoung can hear a muffled noise pressed into pillows that sounds like it comes from somewhere deeper than just Seulgi’s mouth, somewhere from inside that aches and resurfaces like a bruise that won’t heal.

Sooyoung wears her lower lip to pieces, lets her teeth tug off dry bits of skin as she listens to Seulgi cry and try to be quiet about it, probably, so she doesn’t disturb any of the other residents. And Sooyoung doesn’t know why, but she misses when the girl didn’t think to consider her apartment neighbors anymore, when she was too busy laughing and loving to notice she was filling the silence of everyone else who wasn’t as lucky.

She turns over on her side and tugs her comforter over her body. Seulgi will get used to being alone eventually — Sooyoung’s been alone all these years, after all, she knows best about these things.

So heartbreak is a little different than just being alone as the default.

“When you broke up with Saeron,” Sooyoung asks Yerim one day, careful even though it’s been a year since their split and because Yerim still needs a few seconds to recover at the mention of her ex. “How long did it take for you to get over?”

Yerim plays with the straw to her americano. “I don’t know,” she says after a moment, then: “Until I could smile again without feeling like I was faking it.”

A little over a month passes, and Sooyoung doesn’t hear Seulgi cry as often, which is good except it’s still quiet and Sooyoung is still thinking about the girl who has no reason to wait outside in the snow anymore, who she doesn’t hear crash into pans on Sunday morning because she is too busy dancing, too busy laughing, too busy being in love.

Sooyoung likes the quiet, she does, but there is something wrong with this brand of silence, the kind that settles over the whole building in echoes of warmth left behind. Hayoung calls her dramatic when she talks about it, but Sooyoung pushes her window open to hear the birds and buys a small speaker to play music whenever she’s indoors now: if she can’t rely on noise to come from apartment 503 upstairs, then she’ll make her own.

Of course that’s not how it works, but Sooyoung tries and tries until she ends up at apartment 503 one night, a rustling of carryout containers in bags at her sides bumping against her knees when Seulgi opens the door in a messy bun and unfocused eyes, large reading glasses over the brown of her eyes.

Seulgi is nicer than she’d ever be about it, Sooyoung realizes. She lets the other girl in and they sit on her living room floor, unpacking the takeout and watching an old romantic comedy on the TV. Seulgi is gracious even in her pain, opening home and heart — however bruised the latter is.

Sooyoung’s annoyance ebbs away, and she’s struck at how easy it happens, how violent skies turn soft as sunset in the presence of a regular girl holding a heart’s worth of pain.

Every Thursday, after her last lab for the week, Sooyoung learns something new about the girl that lives upstairs.

Seulgi begins to invite her for brunch on weekends, but Sooyoung insists on going out instead of cooking inside either of their places. There are two reasons for this:

First, it is easier not to want to kiss the girl with golden spun hair, barefoot in a small kitchen and laughing at her when she can’t figure out the morning crossword.

Second, Sooyoung doesn’t soon forget the brunches Seulgi had when she was Joohyun’s girlfriend, a flare of possessiveness she doesn’t want to understand.

She doesn’t want to share traditions. She doesn’t want to share anything about Seulgi at all.

She watches Seulgi take a photo of her across their table when she thinks she’s not looking, and writes the four-letter word in the column for a person clumsy in matters of the heart.

_Fool._

She thinks, for the first time, maybe she doesn’t like love.

Love comes unaccompanied by warning signs, a flash flood too late to brace herself on anything. Sooyoung feels like she’s drunk after only two drinks while watching movies together one weekend, thinks self-preservation has kicked in too late to tell her _danger, danger, danger_ when Seulgi gets too close saying goodnight lately.

Her heartbeat pounds in her ears even when Seulgi moves away each time, insecurity planting a seed inside the cavity of her chest. It’s been months since the older girl has mentioned anything about Joohyun, but Sooyoung can’t help but assume it’s guilt that keeps them dancing along the edge of disaster like this, keeps the jagged seams of her heart disappointed and angry.

Disappointed because Seulgi loves someone else, has been loved first by another and Sooyoung is too late to catch up with ghosts. Angry because it doesn’t stop her from giving chase anyway, running through cobblestone or field, rain or shine, good day or bad day.

Sooyoung has to begun to look for her whether good or bad day, and the realization keeps her up at night.

Maybe it isn’t even love. Sooyoung thinks she might fear that the most.

Maybe this is just the beginning — the natural disaster of someone too easy to like.

“I don’t want to — I’m not someone you use to get over someone else,” she says one day, because someone has to say it.

But without missing a beat, Seulgi fills the cracks that have begun to chip away at what’s been building in her heart, answers fear with a steady palm against her waist, and Sooyoung closes her eyes and lets herself be drawn in.


End file.
